About Chöpo Bazaar

This blog took its inspiration from El Tianguis Cultural del Chopo, also known as The Chopo Bazaar. El Tianguis Cultural del Chopo is a flea market located near Mexico City’s downtown. The original location of El Chopo was near the Museo Universitario del Chopo on the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Since the early 80’s, this flea market has offered up counterculture music recordings and memorabilia. From vinyls, to t-shirts, to rare books, Mexico City’s youth subculture could find it all here. The Tiangis del Chopo still exists. Its open air stalls offer up a little bit more now with body piercings, tattoos and bands showcasing their talent on a stage inside the market.

Every Saturday, for more than three decades now, El Chopo has been a gathering for youth, especially for those with an interest in goth, metal and punk. More than just a flea market, El Chopo started out as a place for the kids of Mexico City to discover new and never before heard music from the U.S. and Britain and eventually it became a community for an alternative music scene and a home for people to come together to promote and discuss different ideologies.

This blog’s main inspiration came from El Chopo serving as a market place for youth looking for new music in a country whose government, at the time of El Chopo’s inception, was suppressing their youths’ expression in politics and popular culture through censorship. With that inspiration as a driving force for this blog, it will serve as a gathering place for the discovery of new music, or in some cases, old music that was maybe lost in time. The dialogue in this blog will not focus on just one genre, but on many from all over the world. Music is universal. Let us all come together and discover something new.